Talk:H. G. Wells

I find Elasah Drogin, Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society (New Hope, KY: CUL Publications, 1986), p. 38. and also Time Magazine, 1998 (http://205.188.238.181/time/archive/preview/0,10987,988152,00.html) sited for the quote about Margaret Sanger. 1931 and 1935 are about equally cited, with the quote split between those years in one case. I also find -- H. G. Wells, in Douglas, Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future, pp. 142-3, quoted from Annie Laurie Gaylor, Women Without Superstition. David R. Ingham 17:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Now I find a definite source:

In remaining years Sanger often quoted Wells, and turned his tributes to her into a definitive authorization of her work. When supporters sent quotations praising Sanger to the Nobel Committee in Stockholm in an unsuccessful nomination effort for the Peace Prize, Wells' words resonated above all others: "When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine" (from a 1935 speech at Barber's Hall, London, included in Round the World for Birth Control, Birth Control International Information Centre, 1937, MSM S62:598).

I remember words to this effect being quoted by Kenneth Clark in Civilisation. I've found the passage, which is as follows:

"I remember H. G. Wells, who was a kind of twentieth-century Voltaire, saying that he daren't drive a car in France, because the temptation to run over a priest would be too strong for him."
— Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (1969), ch. 10: The Smile of Reason.

Since this reads like a paraphrase rather than a quote, however, it doesn't tell us what Wells actually said or where Clark believed he had heard it. - InvisibleSun 22:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

This page contained an outrageous quote-mine (quote taken out of context) from "The Modern Utopia" in which Wells is taken out of context to make him appear to support genocide for "inferior races.": "there is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it." The actual context reverses the meaning; in fact Wells did not support "exterminating" anyone in his "Utopia" and even supports the right of mixed-race marriages!

This quote mine originated with creationist scholar Richard Weikart in his cunning and dishonest book "From Darwin to Hitler" in which he attempts to blame Christians mass-murdering Jews on Charles Darwin. Because Weikart's hoax was popular with creationists, it has been copied onto many creationist websites. Weikart wrote as follows:

'Ideas about racial extermination were not unique to Germany, but became very influential elsewhere also. H. G. Wells epitomized an influential Anglo-American social Darwinist attitude when he stated that "there is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it."' [Richard Weikart, "From Darwin to Hitler", p.185]

What a cunning creationist liar! I have added the context by adding sentences before and after it. 69.253.44.13 05:43, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

If the person making this slanderous charge could have figured out, if he or she had examined the source of my H. G. Wells quote, they would have found in my endnotes that I indicated that I got the H. G. Wells quotation from Diane Paul's book, _Controlling Human Heredity_, p. 75. Paul on that page gives no indication of the context, but states: "Fabians were often nationalist and imperialist, though few went as far as Wells, who bluntly asserted that 'there is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it." She then cites a secondary source herself, so she may not realize the context, either. If my quotation is in error, it is because I relied on a secondary source that also got it wrong, not because I am a liar. —This unsigned comment is by Richard Weikart (talk • contribs) .

Ok, in keeping with Hanlon's Razor, we understand that you do not wish to be thought cunning. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:05, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Ningauble, are you trying to be funny or deliberately insulting? ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:08, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

It may be a little funny, but my intent was to admonish: The defense against the charge of "cunning liar" is that he did not invent the lie, but was spreading the lie of others. This is not very funny.

Anyone with a modicum of familiarity with Wells' political work would recognize it as extremely uncharacteristic of him. Even if one were completely ignorant of his work, it is such an extreme and repugnant view that a responsible writer might be expected to check the veracity of the attribution before spreading libel.

It is lamentably common for professional writers to use a rumored quote without verifying the source but, whatever one thinks of that sort of folly in general, when it is a defamatory lie in a polemical work I think Hanlon's Razor is both a charitable assumption and a fitting admonishment. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:19, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.

It's not true that the more sex that you have, the more it interferes with your work. I find that the more sex you have, the better work you do.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

Once the command of the air is obtained by one of the contending armies, the war becomes a conflict between a seeing host and one that is blind.

Sailors ought never to go to church. They ought to go to hell, where it is much more comfortable.

Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.

The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.